Building Mini-Vegetarium Prototype

Don’t want to choose between cheap “plastic” veggies and expensive organic ones?

Want to have your own, independent source of organic food?

Now you can grow your own fresh organic food without dedicating a lot of your time to farming!

Mini-Vegetarium is an all-season automated greenhouse. Growing food in it is a pleasure.

• Provides healthy food of the highest quality
• Takes minimal time (less than 2 hours per week)
• Requires minimal resources

Mini-Vegetarium is 3 meters (9.8 ft) long, 0.92 meter (3 ft) wide, 1.5 meters (4.9) above the ground, and 0.8 meters (2.6 ft) deep underground; oriented to the South. Needs to be exposed to direct sunlight at least half a day. One Mini-Vegetarium can provide for a family of four, year round, all salad veggies (4-8 kg or 9-18 lbs per month), or all necessary greens (can be grown in tiers). The water and electricity consumption will largely depend on the purchased package, as well as on the climate. The full package in non-extreme weather conditions will be able to function without external sources of electricity. Testing the prototypes will allow me to develop and prove those calculations.

My current estimates are made based on the Czech Republic prices. From the material costs standpoint this is the most expensive market among those that I am now targeting (I'm also considering United States and Russia/Ukraine). Based on my today's estimates the materials for the basic package will cost 9,300 CZK (around 370 USD, or 26,000 RUB). This amount can be drastically lowered once the materials will be purchased wholesale. I am not ready yet to name the price of the Mini-Vegetarium, but it will obviously, on top of the materials, contain labor expenses, logistics, and other standard components. I will be aiming to make it attractive to the middle-class audience that has backyards and desire to be healthier and more independent.

Mini-Vegetarium is a new philosophy of food production. It is an opportunity to be stronger and get to the next level of self-reliance. Now we can depend less on the grocery store!

My name is Ivan Marchenko. I’m 36, and the proud father of five children. Although I currently have an office job, I have always dreamed of developing my own business. Seven years ago, I became interested in the vegetarium idea. Since that time, I have examined several projects, and worked through more than 10 versions of my own vegetarium (created drafts and 3D models, calculated the necessary materials, created estimates, and discussed plans with experts). My work transformed a spacious and sophisticated greenhouse into a compact and smart one, easy to assemble, and made from materials that are easily available. Now is the time to turn my vision into a product!

I am confident that there are many interested in observing the progress of the Mini-Vegetarium prototype, and who would be willing to help with this project, in both word and deed. That is why I decided to start this crowdfunding campaign.

My goal is to raise 300,000 Russian rubles (around $4,200 US dollars, or around 110,000 Czech korunas). The money will be used in the following ways:

25,000 RUB ($350) – all-season smart plant bed (for shorter plants) with basic automation;

35,000 RUB ($490) – mini-vegetarium with basic automation;

40,000 RUB ($560) – additional automation and support systems (making it autonomous);

200,000 RUB ($2800) – developing an online platform, and a smartphone app.

I’m going to start assembling the prototypes as soon as possible, so that I could have enough time to test them both in the summer heat, and in the winter cold.

I welcome your feedback, and it would be my pleasure to conduct a personal presentation just for you, via Skype or Zoom!

Email me at marcivan@ya.ru, and I will surely reply.

Thank you for your interest and support! Your help matters! :)

I have sent the draft of this campaign to some of my friends to see what questions they had. Here are the most popular questions with my answers. I appreciate the feedback!

Why are you raising funds while not having a working prototype? Why didn’t you invest in putting together a nicer looking video? Why, if you are looking to build a large-scale business, are you asking for such a small amount? Do you have a business plan?

My main goal for now is to find people who would be as excited about the Mini-Vegetarium idea, as I am. If someone is willing to donate money, it shows that the subject is taken seriously. The raised funds are used at this point to develop the idea, not to set up the business. I hope that the rewards that I developed will be attractive for people even at this early stage. I strongly believe that involving multiple people in the prototype work will make a huge difference. And it will also allow laying the foundation for the future team.

I decided not to invest yet into professional video production. I hope to raise the money I need at this stage without it. I also believe that the “home-made style” video better illustrates the current stage and priorities of the project.

I certainly invest, and will continue to invest my own money into this. The campaign estimates don’t include the lion’s share of the automation expenses, as well as logistics, equipment, and many more.

The development of the large-scale business will certainly require more funding. I am yet intentionally not organizing my calculations and forecasts into a business plan. In March 2021, when I will have a better understanding of costs associated with building and maintaining the prototypes, I will be able to forecast my cashflows better, and thus put together a more reliable business plan to attract investors.

Do you have any detailed information behind your estimates? What is the Smart Plant Bed, and why don’t you say much about it? Why are you intending to spend most of the raised funds on the online-platform, and the smartphone app?

I do have the detailed estimates that reflect all the materials. I would be happy to show those during individual or group presentations. I’m not including them here to prevent overloading the content with excessive details.

The Smart Plant Bed is a trimmed version of Mini-Vegetarium. It is more affordable on the basic package level but may be less energy efficient for taller plants. The video contains pictures of both greenhouses. I’m talking less about the Smart Plant Bed to avoid blurring the product image.

Regarding the app, and the online platform - those things are intended to become my competitive advantage. The greenhouse itself is easy to copy. It's way harder to compete with solid apps that have a good number of users. It is critical to start working on them as soon as possible. The money that I am raising now will cover the very first stage of that work - creating process maps and detailed interface drafts, as well as a standard online-store. That will help provide all the inputs that are necessary for the further work that will cost much more.

I hope that our website in the future will allow forming a community of people who will be sharing their success stories, and will order and offer services like fertilization, harvesting, canning. And certainly, that website will allow purchasing new vegetariums, upgrades, and related products (soil, seedlings, fertilizers, and much more).

What do you mean by the “opportunity to become one of the founders”?

Person who is willing to put 150,000 RUB (approx. $2,100) into the project at such an early stage gets the opportunity to negotiate with me on buying the shares, once they become available. Besides that, for that amount he/she obviously gets the Smart Plant Bed, the Mini-Vegetarium, and all other rewards. So this amount by itself is not considered as payment for a share. From legal (as well as common sense) perspective on the current stage I cannot sell shares of a business that doesn’t exist yet. But my firm intention is to open a real opportunity to buy shares for those who are willing to make a donation of this size. The amount of the shares, and conditions will be negotiated. As the project will develop it will be SUBSTANTIALLY harder to get this opportunity.

What do you mean by automation? What components do you plan to have, and how will they work?

I will be determining the automation specifics while working with the prototype. There will be different modules, and some elements will vary depending on the package. I'm planning to use Arduino platform for integration, along with some remote server-based software. I hope to make the system flexible and easy to program.

Here are the tasks that will be performed (including things that will not be addressed within the next year):

• CLIMATE CONTROL: measuring the temperature of air, water, and soil; managing cooling and heating (turn on/off the fans, water pump, heating elements)
• WATERING: water supply, filtration and preparation, measuring soil humidity, humidity distribution control, water chemical analysis
• LIGHTING: managing grow-lamps, switching from central to autonomous electric supply, and back
• CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF SOIL: controlling PH and micro elements in soil; recommendations for soil composition corrections, based on specifics of the cultivated crop
• REMOTE VISUAL CONTROL: transmitting photos of the plant via app to the user to allow assessing its condition (fruits, general condition, pests)
• AUTOMATED PLANT DIAGNOSTICS: using modern visual analysis technology to assess plant condition based on the form and color of leaves, flowers, stem, fruits, as well as the size and the structure of the plant; systemic analysis of plant productivity depending on different environment parameters; recommendations for plant care & automated general control

Larger datasets will allow us to enable people doing wonders on their backyard, without using harmful chemicals. And our customers will be able to share impressive photos and time-lapse videos on Facebook.

---

If you liked reading this material, you will surely enjoy participating in the online-council for this project. Please email me at marcivan@ya.ru if you still have questions, and come onboard! I will be happy to see everyone – the more diverse group we will get, the better! 😊